Thursday, May 17, 2012

Snakes on the Coastal Plain

Before I started beading, I wrote a blog about my life here in the South. Since I started beading, I have written far less and have also gotten used to many, many more aspects of daily life that once seemed so different from the life I lived in a land where it actually snows and nothing which lived in your yard could eat you whole.

Snakes are frequently on the tip of my tongue,
metaphorically, because of the large number where I live in SoGa. I have
never liked snakes of any kind (it must be from seeing the movie
"Sssssssss"), but was never afraid of them until I moved to this area
which is full of poisonous varieties. We have diamond back rattlesnakes,
pigmy rattlers, cotton mouth moccasin, copperheads, and coral snakes. We
also have a great slithering bunch of nonpoisonous snakes, but I'm not great at
telling the difference because my reaction is to scream, turn tail, and run
away. So if I see a king snake, a white oak snake, or a rat snake I
haven't looked at it long enough to know whether I was actually in any
danger. It really is hard to tell when you are waving your hands above your head and running full speed in the opposite direction. I long ago gave up turning my compost pile because the snakes
love to burrow into its warmth. Fortunately the heat and the humidity
here make black gold for me as long as I continue to pile in my scraps and
clippings.

In my yard I don't use insect spray or any type of weed killer other than
boiling water (it really takes care of those weeds better than round up...just
get an electric tea kettle, fire it up, and pour). This really helps make
it a healthy place for for lots of creatures including snakes. We have so
many trees, bushes, and birds that the snakes love it. The house is on an
acre right in front of about 30 acres of swampy woods. For the most part,
my fear of the snakes comes from wanting nothing bad to happen to my
dogs. I did not know until a student told me, but dogs do not react to
snakes. Mine have walked right over many, and I was warned by the vet
that one bite will kill them. If they were smaller, I would also have to
worry about birds of prey swooping down and plucking them from the yard. Maybe you heard about a hawk dropping a puppy into a California yard recently. It is like that here. One of the coolest things I've seen on my ride to work was a hawk taking with a snake in its talons, then dropping it to the ground to kill it. It is a regular wild kingdom.

My friend recently sent me a link to a story that would appear to be in
the category of fake news, but it turns out to be frighteningly true. Check out what Jon Stewart said about my a snake new to the area on The Daily Show. Last fall I saw a story about a python found close to me. Holy moly, Burmese pythons are on the loose! This has
definitely awakened the primal fear I have of snakes. Forget all
the Ssssssss junk about being turned into a snake, now I can worry
about being attacked by one. At least the local alligators don't try to
eat adult deer.

This sent my into a panic. I found articles confirming
the python feeding frenzy. The first one shows a dead python after it tried to eat an alligator, and the second article says
that the projection for the Burmese
python migration across the southern US is incorrect. I'm going
to hope this is true because I can't stand the thought of looking out for
12-foot long snakes hanging out in my backyard.

Of course in my search for more info on the
freed-pet-pythons-now-taking-over-the-Everglades, I discovered that a guy in
Mississippi who runs an alligator zoo is missing 50 of his creatures after
recent flooding enabled them to swim over the six-foot fence. He had 250
alligators, but 200 of them escaped during Hurricane Katrina. I don't
need to worry about his 14-foot gators because we already have plenty around
here. But a 12-foot long snake, now that would stick out like a sore
thumb.

About Me

I am by no means a writer, but I have been keeping track of my life here in Georgia ten miles north of the Florida border in a land where I cross paths with peacocks, pigs, chickens, alligators, armadillos, fox, coyote, and rattlesnakes on a daily basis. I teach Spanish at a high school in the next county and my 64 mile round trip commute affords me time to listen to NPR and watch the changing of the seasons in the fields I pass. I can tell you more than you want to know about road kill and carrion creatures, and have been waging a months-long one-sided battle with a white rooster who has a death wish and a deep desire to cross the road in front of my car.